Single-Sourced Authoring Project

The Situation

Tech Company is a server manufacturer with software and hardware installation guides published exclusively in print PDF format.

To boost customer service, Tech Company reached out to content strategists, listing 5 major objectives to revamp their content and increase brand loyalty and market attractiveness:

• Objective 1: Create content that can be updated once and outputted to multiple sources
• Objective 2: Publish installation guide content to the web
• Objective 3: Produce print PDFs of individual chapters, extracting sections from the overall guide
• Objective 4: Develop article consistency for translation purposes
• Objective 5: Personalize print PDFs for particular customers

Our team tackled Chapter 1 of Tech Company’s software and hardware installation guides, as well as the software guide’s Appendix A and the hardware guide’s Appendix B, as proof of concept to update Tech Company’s support documentation.

The Challenges

Tech Company had published their PDFs with a CCMS, MadCap Flare. However, we needed to increase the company’s efficient use of single-source content to facilitate Tech Company’s goals. The two major challenges were:

1. No current multi-channel outsourcing: Tech Company’s current output was isolated to print PDFs.
2. Inconsistent topical organization: Tech Company’s writers neither followed a template for topics nor structured their content, inhibiting the capacity for multiple authors to maintain a cohesive voice or tone throughout the documentation.

Our team tackled these challenges to create a pilot project that demonstrates our capacity to bridge the gap between where Tech Company was and where it wants to be.

The Results

Our team’s proof of concept accomplished the following key outcomes:

1. Efficient Single-Sourced Authoring: Content updates are now streamlined by topic types; this eliminates redundancy and ensures accuracy across outputs, saving Tech Company valuable time.
2. Enhanced User Experience: We created a searchable digital platform (HTML) for intuitive, online access to information while retaining the ability to generate PDFs, prioritizing multi-channel outsourcing.
3. Improved Consistency: We developed standardized templates to guarantee a unified voice and style across documentation, regardless of author or topic type, safeguarding unified content.
4. Particularized Content: By tagging content by type, Tech Company can tailor printed guides to specific customer needs and product versions.

The Approach

Tech Company provided our team with a foundation to build upon. To meet Tech Company’s needs most effectively and efficiently, my team prioritized content organization, availability and searchability, and cohesive CSS design. 

Identifying Topic Types

Using Jorsick guidelines, we identified each article as a Concept, Task, or Reference.

• Concept Topics identify what something is.
• Task Topics describe how to perform a particular action.
• Reference Topics provide information that clarifies either Concept or Task Topics (e.g., figures or tables)

Isolating articles by topic types improved Tech Company’s capacity to develop consistent modular content, and prepared it to use that content for translation purposes (Objective 4). 

Separating Content into Singular Types

Tech Company would often combine particular topic types (e.g., tasks with concepts), which is challenging for the reader because it inhibits their ability to identify the content succinctly.

Solving the first problem, publishing to HTML, was simple enough; however, the second problem required a more significant overhaul of Tech Company’s content. For example, Tech Company’s content on its return policy mixed content type and task type formats.

The team needed to separate those types into distinct, reusable chunks.

Above, the first two paragraphs function as Concept Type content; whereas the information beginning with “To return a component” qualifies as a Task Type.

Grouping topic types also inhibited Tech Company’s ability to create modular information, or “chunks.” Thus, separating content by type satisfied Objectives 1, 2, and 5. 

Structured Authoring

One major problem Tech Company faced was inconsistent tone or voice between articles with different authors. To resolve this issue, we implemented to tactics: 

So, after separating content into types, we created Jorsick-inspired templates for each type.

These templates used structured authoring to identify required or optional elements for each topic type.

Incorporating structured authoring improves the consistency of Tech Company’s content, which benefits all 5 of its major objectives.

Multi-Channel Outputs

To satisfy Objective 1, we created a searchable HTML online database. 

This database included the first chapters of Tech Company’s hardware and software installation guides, as well as the software guide’s Appendix A and the hardware guide’s Appendix B.

CSS Design

Tech Company’s Installation Guides featured consistent document design. My team updated fonts from serifs to sans serifs, since research suggests these font types are easier to read for individuals with poor eyesight and/or dyslexia. However, stylistically, sans serifs are currently perceived to be more clean and modern, as well.